World’s first forensic jeweler IDs disaster zone victims through jewelry

By Elizabeth Hunter

A former jewelry designer has become the world’s first forensic jeweler, who IDs bodies in disaster zones through their rings, necklaces and earrings.

Dr. Maria Maclennan, 36, analyzes victim's bracelets, gemstones, pendants and trinkets for clues to help emergency crews, investigators and families.

She first studied jewelry design at the university, then realized she wanted to use her talents to help people instead.

The Dundee-based forensic jeweler has since been drafted in to aid identification in disasters and mass fatalities around the world.

She helped identify victims of the 2015 Tunisia terror attacks, worked on Grenfell, the Germanwings plane crash in France in 2015 and the Mozambican airliner disaster in Namibia in 2013.

She's also helped ID the bodies of migrants lost in sea crossings.

Maria says the "holy trinity of primary methods," teeth, fingerprint, DNA – are the still the foremost ways to establish who the bodies are.

But she realized jewelry can hold vitals clues to discovering who a deceased person is - which can help remains be reunited with loved ones.

Maria joined a project led by Interpol when she was a master's student at the University of Dundee.

It was designed to improve practices around victim identification in disasters, which sparked her interest in the relationship between forensics and personal effects.

She said: ''It was a project that was spearheaded by Interpol and a number of other international project partners, looking at how we could improve practices around disaster victim identification.

"They were looking at the usual scientific method - DNA, fingerprinting, dental records - but they were also expanding into what we call secondary methods.

"They were looking at clothing, personal effects, body modification, tattoos, and jewelry.

"That was my background - I was a jewelry designer by trade.

“A lot of pieces are very traceable. The might have some kind of mark, a serial number, a hallmark.

“A lot are very personalized, they can connect to a manufacturer, a designer, a maker and we can trace something back to the place of purchase.

“Distinctive pieces are recognized, they’re memorable. Something that has been worn often or for a long time can be a physical repository for DNA.

"They might have been gifted between family members - they might symbolize a very significant relationship, they may have been passed down through generations or they could be really important spiritual, religious or cultural items.''

She added: "I was never as interested in designing as a lot of my peers and colleagues.

''I didn't actually enjoy sitting down at the bench and designing and making quite as much as I did the research and studying.

"It was all the stories, the histories, the meanings that I was interested in - why people wear jewelry, why they don't wear jewelry, when they decide to take it off or keep it with them, and what it symbolized.

"I was living with a medical student, one of my friends, and there was probably a bit of me that saw her go off and thought 'she's really going to save lives and help people.'

"As a jeweler, we design wedding and engagement or memorial pieces, and we really have to understand their personality, their identity and relationships.

''It's very much an important job - but the opportunity to get involved in that project made me think there could be some way to really improve or contribute to people's lives.

"It really opened up my thinking to this whole new world that I hadn't really been exposed to before.

"I loved the idea that I could use my skills and knowledge as a jewelry designer in this completely new way to really help people."

Maria and her team worked on a jewelry classification system, which has since been incorporated into Interpol's current disaster victim identification practices.

Maria, who has a PhD in Forensic Jewelry, said: "I was working mostly in forensic imaging, so any kind of visual evidence, whether that was photography, fingerprints, footwear, patterns, 360 panoramic views of scenes, and I was carrying on my own research alongside that.

"I was starting to deploy to international incidents - aviation crashes mainly, but also natural disasters and terror incidents too. There was a lot of international mass fatality work.

"Once I started doing the work, I realized that it wasn't just about studying these objects, analyzing them, trying to trace them, trying to identify people.

"I think especially in the mass fatality context, where very sadly, many families and next of kin don't have a dedicated place to go to say goodbye, to visit.

"They maybe don't always even receive the remains of their loved ones, they depending on the condition. Very sadly, it might not be possible to repatriate an entire body.

"I think this is where it goes back to my initial training and love of jewelry, and all the personal stories and the sentimental value.

"I actually drew quite a few parallels with the designing and making that we do in the jewelry world and the return and the repatriation of objects to next of kin, because these little objects, they're very often seen as an extension of us and of our identities, especially if they've got that really personal element.

"To receive those back after often quite traumatic incidents and events really means a lot to the families, and that part of the process is not to be underestimated.

"We try and treat the objects with the same amount of dignity and respect as we would the person themselves.

"That includes everything - ensuring that the families have an opportunity to view the object.

"They can choose whether they would like the items returned in their current state, even if they've been damaged or melted or burned, or whether they would like them to be repaired or fully reconstructed.

"We give families that option, and we also try to put just as much care into how we package and gift those items.

"The care that needs to go into that is just as much an important factor, because that's the first impression that families will often get - it's the first thing they'll see.

"Also, many of them may not be quite ready to open that package and confront these items.

"For many of them, they may choose to keep them in storage or only revisit them a number of months or years later, so we have to really think about that whole process."

Maria has begun teaching - lecturing at Edinburgh College of Art, and traveling the world to train law enforcement and investigators based on her research.

"Over the last few years, I've become more involved in training and upskilling law enforcement and investigative agencies on the value of jewelry and personal effects and trying to create practical, hands on training programs, things that will be useful for them in their day to day life," she said.

"Most recently, I was over in Brazil, working with the Brazilian Federal Police and running a training program for them - they're kind of forensic gemologists.

"They have quite a large criminal investigative department over in Brazil, because they deal a lot with gem crime and trafficking and smuggling of gemstones and other artifacts across borders.

"I've developed a lot of training, and now being an educator myself, that's something I'm very passionate about, is trying to share the knowledge I've learned.

"I still work on some live cases, but these days, it's more about kind of helping others to help themselves, rather than me doing the work personally."

The project closest to her heart today is a humanitarian project called Identifying the Displaced, which seeks to use personal effects to identify people lost while migrating across the Aegean Sea.

Maria and her team have recovered over 500 personal objects, belonging to migrants who lost their lives while attempting to cross the "River of Death," which has claimed the life of over 2,500 people between 2014 and 2024.

"We're looking to try and study and analyze the objects, the jewelry, the personal effects that were carried with people on the move," she said.

"Migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, as they make these journeys to try and gain entry into Europe, a lot of them, very sadly, lose their lives.

"By collaborating with the local pathologists and people who work in that industry over in Greece, we've designed a database that we're trying to use to collaborate with different communities to raise more awareness of the migrant crisis, to hopefully generate new investigative insight around the objects.''